w Is Responsible
The Cretin in Chief has a new tack this a.m. - he's decided since he's wrong, he'll ask more of the citizens of the U.S. to be used to make up for his mistakes.
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.
I suppose it is a blessing to some one who has made a horrible misjudgement to have no memory of what he said yesterday, the day before, and the day before that.
When this administration came into office, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense instituted a plan to drastically reduce military forces and consolidate those forces, eliminating a lot of the duplication that had been accumulating over a long period of time. [A major plan was the 'Star Wars' missile defense system, touted during the campaign by candidate Bush.] Also, the Clinton administration had started some of this updating of the military before he came into office.
When the military forces were sent into Iraq, they were a slimmed-down and 'efficient' fighting force, with numbers to be kept down and General Shinseki disgraced and demoted because of his pronouncement that this was a move that could not succeed with the forces envisioned.
On February 28, 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.
Needless to say, the official administration point of view has been proved resoundingly wrong. Now the course must be reversed, and the public at large is going to be paying for this mistake in 'treasure and blood' for some time to come.
The view of the military that concluded it could be trimmed down, updated, sharpened up instead of enlarged, which prevailed back in the '90's and into the early 00's, did not envision an out of control aggressive use of force instead of the traditional uses of diplomacty. The principles behind the formation of the U.N. were that force, violence, world conflict, was horrible and should be avoided. These simple and understandable principles kept down conflict because it is not in the public interest, in any way.
This administration took the opposite view. It has thrown us into wars that were unneccessary, and wasted our resources of life, limb and hard-earned money.
This administration has failed because its presumptions were based on values it neither understood nor practiced. The destruction it has achieved will take a long time, and a lot of responsible public service, to correct.
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that the United States is not winning the war in Iraq and said he plans to expand the overall size of the "stressed" U.S. armed forces to meet the challenges of a long-term global struggle against terrorists.
As he searches for a new strategy for Iraq, Bush has now adopted the formula advanced by his top military adviser to describe the situation. "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. The assessment was a striking reversal for a president who, days before the November elections, declared, "Absolutely, we're winning."
In another turnaround, Bush said he has ordered Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to develop a plan to increase the troop strength of the Army and Marine Corps, heeding warnings from the Pentagon and Capitol Hill that multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are stretching the armed forces toward the breaking point. "We need to reset our military," said Bush, whose administration had opposed increasing force levels as recently as this summer.
I suppose it is a blessing to some one who has made a horrible misjudgement to have no memory of what he said yesterday, the day before, and the day before that.
When this administration came into office, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense instituted a plan to drastically reduce military forces and consolidate those forces, eliminating a lot of the duplication that had been accumulating over a long period of time. [A major plan was the 'Star Wars' missile defense system, touted during the campaign by candidate Bush.] Also, the Clinton administration had started some of this updating of the military before he came into office.
When the military forces were sent into Iraq, they were a slimmed-down and 'efficient' fighting force, with numbers to be kept down and General Shinseki disgraced and demoted because of his pronouncement that this was a move that could not succeed with the forces envisioned.
On February 28, 2003, Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.
Needless to say, the official administration point of view has been proved resoundingly wrong. Now the course must be reversed, and the public at large is going to be paying for this mistake in 'treasure and blood' for some time to come.
The view of the military that concluded it could be trimmed down, updated, sharpened up instead of enlarged, which prevailed back in the '90's and into the early 00's, did not envision an out of control aggressive use of force instead of the traditional uses of diplomacty. The principles behind the formation of the U.N. were that force, violence, world conflict, was horrible and should be avoided. These simple and understandable principles kept down conflict because it is not in the public interest, in any way.
This administration took the opposite view. It has thrown us into wars that were unneccessary, and wasted our resources of life, limb and hard-earned money.
This administration has failed because its presumptions were based on values it neither understood nor practiced. The destruction it has achieved will take a long time, and a lot of responsible public service, to correct.
Labels: Cut and Run; U.N., Dirty Tricks, Iraq
posted by Ruth at 3:38 AM
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